The Market Response:
The Ayn Rand Center reports that sales of Atlas Shrugged have tripled over the same period last year. Amazingly, a record of 200,000 copies were sold in bookstores in 2008--I would've never guessed that the sales figures would've been so high.
1) Why would objectivists be less prone to hypocrisy?
2) Wouldn't objectivists already have a copy? - these purchases ought be new recruits not yet properly indoctrinated.
HGB
Was there a bumper crop of pimply awkward teenage boys recently?
I resemble that remark.
I resemble that remark.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock
Funny to see it linked with something else, though.
Would you kindly update the main story?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioshock
I'm skeptical that a video game would cause its players to want to buy a 1000 page book.
In my younger days I played a lot of video, a lot of my friends played video games, and your sir are no ... I mean none of us ever bought a book because it was promoted by a video game.
@Observer: [W]ouldn't it be hypocritical for an objectivist to borrow a book from a public library?
No. Returning it would be, however.
On a more serious note, this classic essay by Murray Rothbard is really insightful for anyone trying to understand the insanely complicated love-hate relationship between Rand and libertarianism.
/grimaces
Frankly, if our educational system could get people to read lengthy pieces of literature on philosophical issues on their own time, we'd probably be in better shape. That's true even if people started with "bad" works of literature, since that could lead them to more sophisticated works taking similar views, or to reading other works that reject the first view.
Honestly, ARCraig, I thought d'Anconia's speech about money and the phrase "to make money" being America's greatest contribution to civilization was the truly tedious one to read. It's the one I most vividly remember slogging through, at least. Almost as bad as those interminable speeches in Troilus and Cressida.
I dunno, the whole "to make money" thing (while historically speaking complete bullshit, as is the whole $ = US spiel) is at least a nice quotable anecdotal idea, even if it's buried in an immensely unreadable, unending speech. The attack on Robin Hood is also fairly decent insofar as it gets the point across in an easily-understood and appreciated manner. John Galt's speech doesn't even provide us with anything like that- the whole thing is in never-ending rambling Rand-ese.
She was and always remained a very Russian author- the same people that gave us Tolstoy and War and Peace. For an American audience, I think she would have benefited immensely from a ghostwriter to soften up and condense her prose. Of course her ego never would have allowed for that.
McCardle, it's true -- Chambers appears able to write. I am half tempted to pick up Witness now.
I know I was impressed one could come up with a new philosophy out of whole cloth in this day and age. Again, I am not a fan, but I am glad I slogged through and I hope most intellectuals do.
Indeed, my reaction to Rand's writing had a nontrivial effect in shaping my current moral philosophy.]
If you follow through with any of the logic of the left or the right, it fails in reality. A world with free capitalism and no government restrictions would have buried us in McDonald's Big Mac clamshells by now. A world with nothing but government (not Soviet type: one that actually does work) would have buried us in paperwork because everyone would be covering each other's ass like paranoid lawyers.
Atlas Shrugged makes the point that people are sheep. That's it. The rest is just a bitter ex-commie taking out the frustration of not being able to get those nasty Russian cigarettes any more.
Greenspan only paid attention to the "make money" parts of the book - he seems to have skipped all that stuff about making money by actually PRODUCING something of value instead of stretching paper.
That's where I eventually ended up, going from Rand to Hayek / Popper / Nozick, then in college reading Stanley Fish and going to Nietzche and the "post modern" way my college classes were taught generally. And it all added up to a Hegelian synthesis of libertarian nihilism.
Many years later I continue to believe that restraining overwhelming force (with the primary force in our current time being the physical force wielded by the government) is the most consistent way to recognize the basic fact of nihilism -- that there is no actual moral system to guide our actions and no larger purpose to our lives. Restraining the use of force lets as many people as possible create the purposes and moralities that they desire (if any), instead of bending them to what others believe is the best life. (Of course, I think libertarianism is "most consistent" rather than "perfectly consistent" with nihilism, since libertarianism condemns the use of physical force, and like all moral principles that one has no true foundation).
Unlike Joyce. I've never been able to finish Ulysses and no one's read Finnegan's Wake
I read the first page... still working on it.
I agree with your first sentence, though I doubt Atlas Shrugged qualifies. The second sentence is laudable and IF it happened (as it apparently did in your case from your later post), then I'll concede it was a good thing.
If you can get it free , its rational to get it free.Incentives matter
But the real nadir of Atlas is the tunnel collapse, where a bunch of innocent people die on a train, but they deserve it, because they're things like liberal reporters and playwrights. Both the morality and the prose there are excreable. But the genius is, she constructs the plot so that the reader is either indifferent or quietly cheering to see the innocent "moochers" and "looters" die -- because their ideas so obviously stand against human freedom and caused a great recession. What a mess.
Skip to the last page and start all over.
I did that. I'm stuck in a loop.
:)
Riiiiiiiiiiiight.......
/Dr. Evil voice.
I'm sorry, but nihilism is stupid. Go blow your brains out if life has no meaning.
Could be. From the inside, I'd say our educational system is underrated, given the constraints.
"larger purpose"
Larger than what? To believe in smaller purpose is not to be nihilistic.
"Indeed, my reaction to Rand's writing had a nontrivial effect in shaping my current moral philosophy."
Good to see Sarcastro finally admitting that he is a reactionary...
There's no more reason for a true nihilist to do that than there is to do anything else.
I actually agree with this. I was just being snarky.
In my younger days I played a lot of video, a lot of my friends played video games, and your sir are no ... I mean none of us ever bought a book because it was promoted by a video game.
Then again they don't write many books about blocky polygonal shapes.
LOL, I'll always recall her depiction of the black guy in that scene: a simpleton (of course, he's black) who was nonetheless a nice guy- within the limits of what he had to work with. It immediately made me think of Russian racism.
If you follow through with any of the logic of the left or the right, it fails in reality. A world with free capitalism and no government restrictions would have buried us in McDonald's Big Mac clamshells by now. A world with nothing but government (not Soviet type: one that actually does work) would have buried us in paperwork because everyone would be covering each other's ass like paranoid lawyers.
Atlas Shrugged makes the point that people are sheep. That's it. The rest is just a bitter ex-commie taking out the frustration of not being able to get those nasty Russian cigarettes any more.
From the Economic Freedom Index it sure looks like the most prosperous countries tend to follow an economic model closer to libertarianism than the others.
Regulation doesn't have to occur via government. With the right legal system other groups and individuals can sue to stop corporations from polluting and engaging in other tortious and criminal acts.
"I was just being snarky."
Sadly, I think you missed my own snark in that (true) statement - i.e. what it implies about the comment I was responding to.
Perhaps best, as I'm not actually much of a Rand fan, though as a libertarian your (typical) off-hand dismissal of AS did rankle a bit.
Go blow your brains out if life has no meaning.
Even if life has no meaning, it's still pretty darn enjoyable, so why not enjoy it while you can?
Yes there is. He hasn't done it before.
Nick
From ape, to man, and back to ape again. Quite a journey, there, Cornellian.
In the wake of that little speech, I know the perfect place for you to hang out.
At least the following is worthy of rebutting:There is no mention, or even inference, of a "black guy" in that scene.
Sorry, my snarkasm meter was wonky.
AFAIC, libertarianism constitutes legitimate political philosophy even though I disagree with the extent to which the Austrian school takes its economics. Ayn Rand, not so much.
As philosophy, the works of Ayn Rand are almost totally worthless. She was a philosopher in the same sense that L. Ron Hubbard was a philosopher. She does not give arguments; she makes Olympian assertions. She seems to feel that mere arguments are beneath her. After all, who could possibly disagree that an irrefutable logical chain leads from the axiom that A=A to the assertion that the gravest of moral crimes consists in dropping a dollar into the Salvation Army bucket?
In her "non-fiction" (a term with a doubtful extension to anything she wrote), she speaks constantly of "logic" though she appears blissfully unaware that logic has been developed a bit since Posterior Analytics. She registers no comprehension whatsoever of the work or even the existence of Frege or Godel or Tarski or Carnap or Quine.
She speaks constantly of "reason," but this term has no content whatsoever. It seems to be some kind of scary occult hypostatized entity. Again, where is her engagement with the long history of considerations of the problems of rationality? One could go on and on and on and on in the same vein.
As literature, on the other hand, the works of Ayn Rand are absolutely totally worthless.
I don't even remember his race being mentioned, but if it was, it wasn't a huge focus.
I thought the tunnel collapse was a powerful scene. We all contribute to our own downfall in some way. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem etc. etc...
Since reading the book, I've been surprised by the amount of vitriol I've been seeing from the National Review. Sure, it was dense, the characters were transparent, and the plot was thin, but it was enlightening. I also don't understand the fixation on atheism within "Objectivism."
(I have never studied this, and only learned that the word existed after reading the book. It's entirely possible I'm getting something fundamentally wrong.)
I guess I read Rand's call to use the talent of one's mind to "produce" as the most moral way to serve your fellow man in a Christian sense. By producing Rearden Metal, Hank did more than just secure a bunch of cash for himself, he made the world a better place. Life became much easier, safer, and cheaper for everyone else, allowing them to use more of their OWN time productively. Which is better, charity through production or charity through alms? That was one of the central themes I picked up from the book, and I think it is entirely consistent with Christianity. Why the hate just because Rand herself was an atheist?
See, for instance, the contrast between Ex Parte and Chapman. Engagement (even hostile) is something different, and better, by my lights, than dismissal.
Oh, I agree. Sometimes, though, I just can't resist the snark. My own view of Rand is pretty much that of Ex Parte McCardle's, but if I wanted to convince one of her fans I wouldn't say it that way. True believers, though, aren't very likely to be converted no matter what, so usually I just avoid the discussion.
Witness is a terrific read. I just finally read it a few years ago. In my opinion, and contrary to the inspiration for your comment, it is not a particularly well-written book. It did not seem to me to be written in the crisp journalistic style of much of Chambers's other writing. Still, it is a remarkable and powerful piece of work.
Now having said how much I like Chambers, I confess that I've never thought his review of Atlas Shrugged to be particularly fair or insightful.
It seems to me what Rand and libertarianism in general are up to is trying to convince themselves that the same qualities--selfishness, greed--which in other people are evidence of iniquity, are in the case of themselves evidence of the apotheosis of virtue.
As far as I am concerned the moral superiority of libertarianism is its focus on individual choice. Conversely with socialism(or any of the collectivist philosophies) the state's increasing coercive nature on its citizen's choices is its moral failure.
As I have written before in other threads, libertarianism (in its true, hard-core, zealot form) is nothing more than Marxism repeated.
1. You have an ideology that is appealing.
2. This ideology is useful in breeding extremists who believe that all problems can be solved through the application of their ideology.
a. When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
b. It is impossible to argue actual real-world facts with the hard-core believer, because any failure is not a failure of the ideology, but a failure of the real world. For example, "The Soviet Union only failed because it wasn't true Communism!". Or, "It wasn't that there was too little government regulation, it was that there was too much somewhere else!"
3. Within the ideology, there are inscrutable doctrinal differences that are matters of great concern for people "in the party" but baffle everyone outside. For example, "Are you a Troskyite or a Stalinist?" "Are you a *real* libertarian?"
4. Both ideologies are doomed too failure by valuing some theoretical principal over the actual concrete knowledge of human existence.
a. In the case of Communism, the ideology denied people's essential individuality and selfishness, dooming it to failure.
b. In the case of libertarianism, the ideology denies the essential nature of humans as social animals that have, throughout history, formed groups and hierarchies and, moreover, denies the differences between modern and early-industrial culture.
In the end, though, all that can be said is this- Rand is one heck of a bad writer. U-G-L-Y--- her words ain't got no alibi, they ugly.
1) The self-appellation, 'Objectivism.' In ethics, and most other philosophical fields, 'objectivism' is the view that there is some truth independent of human opinion. This does not mean 'dependent on the individual Will of the ubermensch.'
2) The idea that radical egoism entails a rejection of benevolence/altruism on grounds that such conduct demeans the person being benefited. As an egoist, why should I care if I'm demaning someone else?
I think you miss the point of Randianism. Objectivism is guaranteed to add +2 to your saving throws vs. poison, +3 vs. spells/magick, +4 vs. basilisks, and gives you a +8 saving throw against dates with the opposite sex on a Saturday night.
SenatorX, you haven't engaged my remarks. You instead appear to be debating with some imaginary caricature 'leftist' residing in your mind.
PS. There isn't anything wrong with "freedom" and I certainly didn't imply that. But libertarian thought typically fails to grapple with the constraints on freedom that are inherent in the existence of other people.
A train scene such as you'd conceive it might be interesting indeed: people contribute to their own downfall. But that's basically tragic writing, and the train scene wasn't that. Art that merely suggests that we contribute to our own downfall doesn't conclude whether that downfall was a just end. Often it suggests the opposite. But Rand wants us to know that these people are being clearly, absolutely punished. They're being punished with death for holding the wrong political view, basically. And her plot allows her to make this fair because writing liberal political plays is judged as meaningfully contributing to social and economic breakdown to a point where suffocating in a tunnel is just deserts.
I respect what you're getting at, Mr. Chapman, but please think on what I've written. She goes way further -- and to way darker places, morally -- than "we contribute to our own downfall." That's just a tragic drama, Shakespeare or Sophocles. This is more of a righteous reckoning for those she considers sinfully left-wing.
Also, I think NR savaged the book so much because then more than now, it was Catholic conservative mag, and religion-based conservatism is equally suspicious of all forms of materialism, Marxist or Objectivist. The animating principles of Catholic conservatism, mostly, don't comport with the notion that tracing a dollar sign in the air is a good substitute for a cross on one's chest.
That said, you focus too heavily on the author personally, which probably explains why you would read everything in the worst light possible. If you want to talk about the book, feel free. I just read it, and I enjoyed it. Find someone else to talk about Rand or her beliefs because I don't know anything about them.
Except it's not new at all, it's warmed-over Nietzsche mixed with the Manchester School and True Capitalist Romance magazines. (Rand's crush on Howard Roark was hilariously evident.)
I can't judge Atlas Shrugged, not having read it, but I don't hear that it's any advance on The Fountainhead, which is enough reason for me not to pick it up.
If Prof. Zywicki would give us a post on just what in Chambers' review is unfair to Rand, that would help us have a focused discussion, perhaps.
I don't think one has to be a *Catholic* conservative to find that a touch revolting. Or even a Christian.
Apparently, where Nietzsche talked about "creators of values," Rand's translation had "value." Oopsie.
What I took from Rand's writings, especially Atlas, is a view of libertarianism and economic freedom that, rather than being in tension with basic human rights, dignity of the individual, and good will for the poor, is beneficial. She has done what very few people on the right (whether conservative or libertarian) has ever even tried to do: articulate exactly why their philosophies are good for real, live people.
Sure, she took a thousand pages of fiction to do it, but it was remarkably effective. Atlas ranks up near the Bible in terms of books that have influenced people's lives.
Ayn Rand wasn't against charity; it's just that Will Rogers was more pithy about it: "I remember the days when a liberal was someone who was generous with his own money."
The part of Chambers' review that startled me was the suggestion that children are absent from Atlas, due to a psychological defect on the part of the author. Rand wrote during the 1950s, in an era in which child-rearing was supposed to be the highest calling of each and every woman. Her reaction to that - to remove children from her book in all but a few circumstances - perhaps went too far, but it was probably necessary, given what was expected of women back then. Furthermore, Rand is rather explicit about her thoughts for child-rearing, home-making, and the like: a fine thing if one happens to want to do it, but something that cannot be shoved down women's throats in the name of "sacrifice" and "womanhood."
As a final thought: the vitriol on this thread (and in Chambers' article) reminds me a lot of the Sarah Palin threads. What is it about opinionated, conservative/libertarian women that brings out absolute hatred and makes otherwise smart, thoughtful people throw intellectualism out the window?
Why don't you give us a specific example of what you are alleging? Because I don't think it's going to hold up under scrutiny.
Bingo. Materialism is a big failure of most modern philosophies. Catholicism condemns even the excessive materialism of capitalism. I like Atlas Shrugged because it clearly demonstrates that individualism is right and correct, and under constant attack by collectivist movements like liberalism/socialism/communism. Liberalism eventually will destroy society if allowed to run rampant, because it will destroy all worthy individuals who help make society work. But Rand's philosophy also will destroy society (the absence of children in Atlas Shrugged is a gigantic clue). She has no sense that human life is worthy because it is human. In that sense, she shares much in common with modern libs who support abortion &euthanasia, and by devaluing human life and objectifying people one starts down the road to greater social ruin.
Atlas Shrugged is a fantastic vision of a deluded utopia of supermen. Life just isn't like that. It got liberalism right, but if your philosophy depends on supermen, then it's a weak counterargument. There will never be paradise on earth. In that, Rand shares the basic failure of liberalism - trying to twist society to conform to a false understanding of human nature. Better to acknowledge that individualism should be respect, along with the reality of sin (jealousy will never die) and the needs of the weak and of society in general.
By the way, is this is not the first Ayn Rand thread on Volokh, and the last one ended up with much the same result.
So pointing out that, as literature, Rand's Books make good parrot-cage liner or that, as philosophy, Rand sure can write some humorous erotic scenes.... that is *sexist*?
When put up to *real* philosophy (you know, stuff that occurred since Aristotle, like Rorty, or Heidegger, or Wittgenstein, or, uh, real philosophers) you see that Rand is a bunch of crud. Smoking as a moral imperative? As rational? Because, well, she smoked, and it should just be kinda grandfathered in?
As for literature... you can't call it real literature, since that uses characters, as opposed to stock archetypes. I think that what impresses most pimply-faced 14 year olds is that this is their first exposure to literature that is obviously advancing an ideological/intellectual idea, and one that they can understand. You know, without extraneous concepts like characters, or believable plot, or motivations, or (goodness forbid) any touch of modernism.
Unfortunately, such the complete transparency (oh, I *get* what that scene represents!) of her, inter alia, Fountainhead that makes it so appealing to 14 year olds tends to exclude it from discussions of "literature". There are a great many female writers of literature (great literature); Ayn Rand is not among them.
In short- to say that attacks on Ayn Rand are motivated by sexism is to miss the point. There are a great many defenses to be made of libertarianism (although you won't find them from me)---- the cult of Ayn Rand is not one of them.
No argument from me there. I'm neither Catholic nor conservative, but I was trying to explain where Rothbard and NR were coming from.
Mr. Chapman,
Galt never sought vengeance on anyone, but that scene in the novel is cast as punishment for venal deeds. I know that the scene was meant to make it clear that if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. But it also involves the justice of these people dying for being part of the problem, and even arguing -- as you yourself say -- that mere pity is too much. Really?
Let's say for the sake of argument, these people are part of the problem, and they get themselves killed, because that's how the world works. No pity for them at all? Whom do we pity, then? Your lack of pity gets to my point: we're supposed to feel either indifferent or good about these people dying, because they're politically speaking, part of the problem.
Also, I really feel I'm discussing the work, and not her. I may say "she does this or that" but I mean in her capacity as the author. If I wanted to slag her, well, there's her marriage and her affair with Nathaniel Brandon, for starters, but I don't want to get into that.
Javert,
You make an excellent point that Rand attempts to weave together political outcomes with deeper philosophies and views on reason, morality, and the like. The case you might present is a good one. People are wrong on the economy because their very epistemology is corrupt and feeble, and so they don't understand the real meaning of human value, and, eventually the real life policy outcome of this, is a tunnel collapsing as they go through.
But I'd respectfully hold that I'm not reading the scene shallowly. I think she does a shallow job of tying all this together, evidenced by the fact that no one with a decent or consistent philosophy on life could possibly, in the book, advocate the kind of politics she finds so objectionable. In AS, everyone who's a "moocher" is motivated out of envy, and hate. And they express this, uniformly and to the last, in a desire to use the government to impose regulation on the titans of industry for society, and for the public good.
In her journals on the book, if I remember right, she conceives of a priest character who talks about charity and good works and sacrifice, but comes to realize he's mistaken. She scrapped him because she determined that such a character was impossible. That if you're advocating charity and sacrifice for the public good, at root you're an envious little monster. Just because she attempts to explain the enormity of "the public good" in terms of philosophy, doesn't mean it's still not all bound up in an attack on people because of their politics. The scrapped priest character is the proof: she can't separate her description of a person's capacity to reason from that person's policy perscriptions. And if they're capacity to reason is malformed, and their policy is bad, we ought not tto pity their deaths, as Mr. Chapman says.
That's part of the reason Rothbard correctly, I feel, said so much of the book's tone was "to the gaschamber -- go!"
Baloney! Whatever you might think of her writing or her philosophy, there's NO DOUBT that Ayn Rand sincerely believed in what she was saying, whereas L. Ron Hubbard was a
scam artistprophet whose primary motivation was tofleece the suckerssave humanity by cleansing them oftheir moneyengrams and eventually overcomethe totally bogus space overlord Xenudeeply seated neuroses. (Strikeouts courtesy oftotalitarian theocratsthe UN Human Rights Council in deference to the overwhelming need to avoid committingtruthoffense to religious sensibilities.)On children: you need to read (or re-read) the flashback scenes in Atlas with Dagny et al. as children and the scenes in Galt's Gulch.
Worldwide, of course, the Bible's major competition is the Qu'ran, though the Bible presumably wins that one handily inasmuch as there are a lot more Christians than Muslims.
On second thought, I take it back. My bad.
;^)
Perhaps it's because we see Palin as anti-intellectual and Rand as pseudo-intellectual. If you want to discuss a woman who actually IS an intellectual, how about Hannah Arendt?
Palin isn't anti-intellectual. She likely once wanted, sorta, to be one, but never got around to it, what with raising five kids and the like (such as ruthlessly pursuing power, if that's you're narrative).
Likewise, one can make the argument that Rand was an intellectual with ideas that are demonstrably false (if one demonstrates why they are so), but the claim that she was pseudo-intellectual (i.e. faking it, as Palin is at times wont to do) seems nearly the opposite of the truth. If anything, she was over-intellectual, which is why I've never made it past page five of AS, why is why I, like you, tend to avoid discussing it.
Shooting the fish outside the barrel is more sporting. Likewise Mattski.
On a side note, the characters in Atlas were archetypes, but those in We The Living were certainly more multi-dimensional. Rand was capable of writing different characters; she just chose not to in Atlas. The "Rand's literature appeals primarily to 14-year-olds" is a great ad hominem argument, but ad hominem it remains. (It also doesn't explain why bibliophiliacs like myself adore Rand.)
MarkField: that's fine, and there are legitimate criticisms to be made of every human being, but the vitriol, along with the assumption that those particular accomplished women are psychologically defective morons, is a bit hard to take.
trad &anon: there was a modifying phrase in there (i.e. "in terms of books that have influenced people's lives"). Perhaps we actually agree....?
While there are legitimate criticisms of what Rand did not include in her chef d'oeuvre, let's be real: the thing was really long anyway. Had she gone into more detail into why people are the way that they are (as opposed to leaving it up to the reader to think through it...), and written characters with a lot more depth and ambiguity, the thing would have been longer than the federal stimulus. It would have been responsible for unprecedented deforestation if she also chose to include references and discussions about other philosophers.
The other criticism that comes up a lot is that the people who read Atlas aren't intellectuals. First of all, I'm a fan of anything that gets people interested in literature. American adults don't read enough; I'm not going to complain about adults picking up a book and not only engaging with it, but falling in love with it. Seriously, people, this is like bitching about people who are eating more fibre but neglecting their trace minerals.
A search of Amazon's "people who bought this also bought..." list shows that Atlas buyers go for Rand's other works, Milton Friedman's and Thomas Sowell's books, non-fiction about the Great Depression and other economic issues, The Federalist Papers, and fiction like 1984. Of course, the intellectual nature of her fans' reading lists don't mean that Rand is, herself, intellectual, but certainly calls into question the idea that she only appeals to the Proactiv crowd.
Again, there are certainly legitimate criticisms of Rand, her ideas, and her books, but the "anti/pseudo intellectual" meme implies that intellectualism is about reading the "right" books and being associated with the "right" ideas, rather than about using one's mind to engage the outside world or the human condition.
Ah, so you are an "intellectual" after all ... i was under the impression that you went for the cheap thrill of being the jester around here:)
Deliberately not looking at a dictionary - I think most people who are not Randians would say that greed is the desire to accumulate stuff AND the elevation of that desire over all other considerations. And Rand herself would say that is bad. I think she was using her personal definition of greed as the first part of my definition without the second part to shock people out of their unthinking disapproval of the captains of industry for having lots of money. That's fine, but then a useful word is removed from the language, and confusion is created.
I think most people would revile the greed that would cause, for example, peanut butter manufacturers who knew or had reason to strongly suspect that they had salmonella contamination, to lab-shop until they got a negative test result so they could sell their product and make money off it rather than send it to a landfill. I bet Rand would, too, but she'd find some other way to describe it than "greed".
Believe me, I get this -- I read stuff here every day about Hilary and Obama that I find gagworthy. I don't, however, consider all of it sexist/racist. There are just people who disagree with them and think their ideas wrong or shallow. I think that's all there is behind the criticisms of Palin and Rand you see from "our side" (air quotes because lots of conservatives find Rand unappealing also).
I only threw it that line because the guy I was responding to did. Swing and a miss.
You bet, let's be real. And really it is ridiculous to use the length of the book as an excuse for it's failings. A writer makes the best case they are capable of making. Rand was capable of making "Olympian pronouncements"--in Chambers words--but not capable of engaging with opposing viewpoints in a serious way. And not capable of writing characters with convincing nuance because her ideas were devoid of the nuance to which open-minded, curious and observant people are inclined.
Well, without reliable survey data it's hard to know whether Rand is an end point, mid point, or starting point for people. Students I knew in college (which for me was almost a couple decades ago) who had read her either tried to find more philosophically sophisticated versions of what she was saying, or thought she was terribly wrong and then read and relied on communitarian or man-as-a-social-animal arguments to argue against her positions. I didn't know people who became "Randroids" and saw her works as a bible to be unquestioningly followed. But I went to a small, well-regarded liberal arts college, so these results are not necessarily generalizable.
As a separate point, on the "if you're a nihilist, go kill yourself" idea, I don't see how that follows at all. If someone thought their life was going to be horrible for the rest of their existence, they were in chronic pain, or had simply gotten tired of living, then a nihilist probably would have less resistance to committing suicide than someone who believed in a religious or other faith with strictures against suicide. But if you don't have a reason to want to end your life, I'm not sure how being a nihilist automatically supplies one. Believing that without being able to serve some large purpose your life is worthless seems like an anti-nihilist idea to me.
Accepting your definition of greed, do you think that the peanut butter manufacturer will be accumulating more stuff due to their selling a defective product, or would they have been able to accumulate more if they had worked harder and cleaned up the factory?
The problem is that their desire for wealth was not elevated over their lazyness.
I think Rand would argue the word 'greed' is not a useful word the way it is commonly used, as it implies that the driving force behind much of the world's productivity is somehow a bad thing.
I don't think the peanut butter manufacturers sold their contaminated product due to laziness. The guys making the decisions about what to do weren't the ones in the plant dragging hoses and turning valves and so on. They weren't too lazy to lab-shop. And laziness doesn't lead people to risk actual prison time, in my observation. Why would not the lazy person just say, send the crap to the landfill, I'm tired of fooling with it.
No, they just couldn't stand the thought of those dollar signs going away, bottom line. The chance of hurting people, making them sick or killing them, and going to prison themselves, paled beside the vision of losing that money. I'm convinced of it.
Respect your elders son. Back in my day we didn't have all these fancy DVDs and CDs. I played games off a tape deck on a TSR-80.
On a slightly more serious note, the link says that sales of AS in Jan 09 are much higher than sales of AS in Jan 08. My understanding is that Bioshock came out in Fall 07. That timing seems inconsistent with the idea that Bioshock is responsible for the increased sales.
Maybe it's because I was also a classics major back in the day, but Rand's style is not off-putting to me. Someone stated above that she's very much a Russian author; what I always see is very much an ancient Greek author. Read the Odyssey or the Iliad, then re-read Rand, and ask yourself if it's necessarily that she's failing as an author when she writes wonderfully heroic characters.
As a final thought: there is a tremendous amount of irony in criticising Rand for writing her books in the way that pleases her, as if she were not capable of something else. I seem to remember this Howard Roark character of hers, who was more than capable of designing skyscrapers in a way that pleased the modern chattering masses, but chose not to, and figured that anyone who wanted something the way he did it would find him.
See the problem here is that you're arguing an opinion that I don't care about, and it has nothing to do with my previous post. It's rather silly, really. You can be as positive as you like, but I'm not going to waste my time.
Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. Yes. Those peanut butter manufacturers were motivated by greed. So were the ones who kept their factories clean. ( so were the politicians who held hearings on the problems, and the lawyers who are currently preparing to sue the manufacturers. ) So what was the difference between the peanut butter manufacturers who did it wrong, and those that did it right? I was saying that the difference was lazyness.
Remember, you were responding to the quote:
While I am sure there are characters that exist who obsess over money for its own sake isn't it more likely that these criminals are motivated by a loss of not money but the loss of the things that it has/does/will achieve for them? Is the "greed" that pushes them to take risks with such a punitive failure if caught come from the desire for extra or for the fear of losing such things as their business, families, education for their children, influence, power, social standing, etc. And so is this even a greed-for-money problem? How do we remove the fear losing all these things as an incentive for people to commit crimes when they see no other way out but a criminal act?
I guess I never understand the people who go after greed or selfishness at all. I don't even understand what exactly you are after if not to abolish somehow all incentives and thereby arrive at good citizens? If nobody has anything to gain and nobody has anything to lose then nobody will do anything wrong?
My contention is that when peanut butter manufacturers are prepared to landfill their stuff if it is found to be dangerous to the innocent peanut-butter-eating public, they're still capitalists but they're not greedy capitalists. I see a difference. The problem with conflating those two is that it helps socialists make the argument that capitalism is evil - see, those pb manufacturers let contaminated stuff get onto the market and the right-leaning people can't even bring themselves to disapprove of greed. Actually, there's another problem: when someone on the left doesn't pay their taxes and give some lame "I forgot" excuse, too many people buy into that excuse; it couldn't be greed (elevating having stuff over obeying the law) b/c only right-leaning capitalists are greedy.
I can't speak for Rand because she's dead, and as far as I know she never addressed such a scenario. My gut feel is that she would agree with me.
I take it for granted that a writer--any writer--writes in a way they find pleasing. How that should insulate a writer--any writer--from criticism is beyond me.
For this conversation at least, my definition of greed
"is the desire to accumulate stuff AND the elevation of that desire over
allmost other considerations." In other words, it is your definition of greed, with a single word changed. That's just to avoid the obsurdity of saying that any person who is greedy would be willing to murder their own children to make money, if they thought they could get away with it. I'm sure you didn't intend such an extreme definition of greed.I checked several online definitions, and they usually qualify the desire as 'excessive', and/or that the amount of stuff desired is more than the person 'deserves'. However, who gets to decide what is excessive and what is deserved? The Randian answers are that there is no such thing as excessive, and the amount deserved is precisely what can be earned via free trade.
That Rand believed what she wrote does not make her a good philosopher 9or a real one).
Javert:
Are you joking? I realize that the Randians claim these are all Rand's 'discoveries,' but that is because most of them know nothing about the history of philosophy. Let's try just a few so as not to bore others:
her identification that the locus of free will is reason Can you say "Kant' [for one]?
her grounding of morality in the nature of man's life Can you say 'Plato,' or 'Aristotle,' or 'Hume,' or ...?
art serves a crucial need of man's spirit and of his conceptual faculty Apart from Kant and Aristotle, ever hear of Cassirer or Langer?
I'm sorry, she was a hack. Not a philosopher and not a very good novelist.
Given Gordon Gekko, you might want to choose a different word to rehabilitate.
Clearly, you have not read The Virtue of Selfishness. If you had, you would know that her view of the requirements of man's life -- and her identification of what the concept "value" depends on -- is wholly different from Plato, Hume et al., and is a fundamental advance on Aristotle.
See my comment above, but insert The Romantic Manifesto in place of The Virtue of Selfishness.
"is the desire to accumulate stuff AND the elevation of that desire over
allmost other considerations." In other words, it is your definition of greed, with a single word changed. That's just to avoid the absurdity of saying that any person who is greedy would be willing to murder their own children to make money, if they thought they could get away with it. I'm sure you didn't intend such an extreme definition of greed."Agree.
"I checked several online definitions, and they usually qualify the desire as 'excessive', and/or that the amount of stuff desired is more than the person 'deserves'. However, who gets to decide what is excessive and what is deserved? The Randian answers are that there is no such thing as excessive, and the amount deserved is precisely what can be earned via free trade."
Oh, I totally agree here. It's not for anyone to say that what anyone else wants and can get through legal means is excessive. I don't need to have six fishing boats, but if somebody else thinks he needs to have six fishing boats, he can knock himself out for all I care, as long as he is not asking me to pay for them.
On the other hand, if, deep down, you don't agree with her ideas, then you find the books tedious and "poorly written" (though seldom with any independent justification for that evaluation).
In other words, "Atlas Shrugged" is clearly a novel of ideas, in the spirit of Hugo and Dostoevsky, and if you are offended by the ideas, you are less likely to enjoy the book (profound insight, huh?).
I am probably not alone in first discovering that I agreed with her ideas while I was reading Atlas. Yes, I was young (21). And, yes, part of the emotional impact was due to the fact that, having been educated by the American intellectual establishment, I had never heard anything like those thoughts before.
However, I am now not young (47), and I still can't understand how it is somehow an insult to say that her ideas and writing appeal mostly to youth. It seems to me that is a deep complement, implying that idealism and metaphysical optimism are needed to be receptive to these novels. I can only push myself harder to try to retain that sense of idealism and optimism as I age.
But it does distinguish her from frauds such as L. Ron Hubbard: that was the comparison to which I was objecting.
As far as assessing good/real philosophers/philosophies, I'd take Ayn Rand and Objectivism over Teh Great Philosopher Karl Marx and Dialectical Materialism anytime--if those were the only two choices on the table.
Argue honestly, please.
Second unless we are just talking abstractly I am curious what exactly you would want to do about greed and greedy people. What bothers me is some sort of follow through against greedy people via state sponsored social engineering. Otherwise I think the desires of free citizens are better left alone and people should be punished for their bad acts regardless of their various motivations. Though of course you can certainly avoid greed for yourself, teach your children of its pitfalls, even write a book about it or shout about it from a street corner. Trying to root it out of others by any means other than persuasion is where I think you would be going wrong.
What do I want? I want the law applied, of course. Tax cheaters need to have the same legal ramifications if they're on the holy left as they would if they were on the right. Peanut butter manufacturers who don't follow FDA-required procedures and falsify in order to sell tainted materials need to go to jail. Do you really consider this sort of thing to be state-sponsored social engineering?
I have read all of Rand's purportedly philosophical work and several of her novels. (I suppose I found Fountainhead most enjoyable, although the movie made me gag.) I admit I have not reviewed her work in ages.
Rand always distinguished her purportedly original ideas from those of tohers. So, for example, she was with Kant and the idealists and rationalists on X but with the empiricists on Y and with neither on Q. So, she rejected Kant's bifurcation of nature and reason [a wise and highly popular move even among neo-Kantians] but claimed to not be making a empiricist move. She rejected Plato's hyper-rationalism, but claimed to be making neither an Aritotelian nor a Humean/Lockean move.
The trouble is that her 'improvements' are patchworks of ideas and theories that cannot simply be stitched together. Further, she does not provide anything like adequate explanation of or justification for these stitchings.
In philosophy, at least among trained philosophers, one cannot get away with saying, 'Yes, my ideas are original because they just really are different from all those other views from which I have picked and snipped.' Nor can one get away with 'My ideas are important because I say so.' The tests for origniality and value are both internal and external. Rand's work fails on both counts: it lacks internal coherence and strength, and it has been without consequence among serious philosophers.
Bonz: Yes, I understood your complaint. I was simply observing that her not being a self-aware fraud did not make her a philosopher. And, presumably, Hubbard's being, if he was, a self-aware fraud is not the reason he was not a scientist.
Finally, someone claimed Rand's books (or just one?) had changed as many lives as the Bible. Is there some data supporting this claim? Someone mentioned Marx; I would think the Manifesto changed quite a few lives. How about Mein Kampf?
I'm just going to apologize preemptively for typos. Arthritis and bad vision. :-}
Anyway I guess the problem might be you are using your own personal definition of greed which inherently contains a bad act. I don't agree with that definition and I have dictionaries and such on my side. I see no reason to abandon the common definition for your personal one.
The claim was that "Atlas ranks up near the Bible in terms of books that have influenced people's lives.", which was an misleading claim. It is second only to the Bible ( though a very distant second ) among Americans, according to a poll.
You say Rand's ideas are not original. So if I was interested in more philosophical writing which reached the same conclusions as Rand expressed in Atlas Shrugged, what trained philosopher would you recommend?
Thanks in advance
As to how you might find philosophical writing which reached the same conclusions as Rand expressed in Atlas Shrugged, - honestly, I cannot say. One point, of course, is that we probably cannot expect to find someone who agrees with everything Rand might have been after in that novel. Beyond that, I'm not sure what conclusions you have in mind.
There are plenty of philosophers who defend individualism, and I have no doubt there are plenty who defend capitalism. You might ask Javert about this. I'm afraid my recommendations would probably be dated (Hayek, Locke, Smith, Hume, Spencer and such). Jan Narveson might be a good contemporary bet.
Javert: Like you, I am a professional philosopher. PhD in 83 (ouch; that was a long time ago). I know there is a Rand Society which meets through the APA. It was rude of me to say that no serious philosophers are influenced by Rand. It would have been more accurate to say that very few have been. There are many, many societies and associations - any of which can get a slot with the APA - but the existence of such associations does not indicate a significant interest among philosophers in general. The followers of Rand among philosophers are a niche interest group, like may others.
As for text book inclusions: well, you can find LeGuin and Beirce stories in lots of philosophy texts, too. That does not make LeGuin or Beirce philosophers. I do think both were far, far better writers than Rand ever was.
Thanks for the response. I guess I should have been more specific. I am aware of the defenses of Capitalism from an practical/economics standpoint, and plenty of the older philosophers defend individualism as superior to monarchy/dictatorship.
I was interested ( and I suspect many other readers of Atlas Shrugged were too ) in Rand's agrument regarding the morality of self-interest, and her defense of individualism over socialism.
If you, or anyone else reading this ( assuming the thread is not entirely dead ) have any suggestions in those area, I'd appreciate it.
Tried to post last night without success. So, I would suggest, for libertarian philosophers, the following:
Jan Narveson, Robert Nozick [obviously], Tibor Machan, and Douglas Rasmussen. Rasmussen wrote a book with someone whose name I can't quite recall - Van Uyl or Den Uyl. I believe Rasmussen is considered one of the 'Aristotelian libertarians.' Sounds like an oxymoron to me, but whatever. Danny Shapiro used to do libertarian stuff. I'm sure some of Tibor's students have gone on to do their own work in the area.
I notice you use 'individualism,' as many Randians do, as roughly synomomous with 'libertarianism' - hence, your contrasting of it with 'socialism.' This might prove confusing as you read more broadly in political philosophy, where 'individualsim' is more often used to identify a perspective on human nature and social relations. On that more general usage, both [philosophical] liberalism and libertarianism are grounded in individualism.
Enjoy!
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